Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Its Legal Because I Said So: Porfirio Lobo Sosa Speaks

This is proof by assertion in the face of objections from the legal profession, judges, and even his own Justice and Human Rights Minister, Ana Pineda, who believes that what happened is corrupt, and that the dismissed justices need to be reincorporated into the Supreme Court

But of course, Pineda's just there as window dressing. No one in the Lobo Sosa government has ever bothered to pay attention to anything she says.

Then Lobo Sosa repeated his mantra of denial:

We should look ahead.

And presumably ignore the error ridden past that is his regime.

Then he dropped this gem:

With lawyers nothing ever is OK, some say one thing and others say something else; I respect lawyers because they exist for this, to make you see as truth what is not truth and the inverse.

Actually, Lobo Sosa will be hard pressed to find a lawyer (outside of Congress, that is) who is arguing anything except that Congress's actions in removing four Supreme Court justices were illegal and unconstitutional.

The consensus includes Human Rights Ombudsman, Ramon Custodio, who released his report on the events. He concludes that the four justices were dismissed in "an arbitrary, abusive, and defective act" by Congress.

But don't tell the President. He knows it was constitutional, because he said so.

Someone else in his administration, though, may have a better sense of law. Late Tuesday night, long after the original article was posted in El Heraldo's online edition, an edit was added at the beginning:

Lobo supports a reform of the Ley de Policía that would make the right to a defense prevail, the aspect on which was based the ruling of the fired magistrates concerning the purification decree.

So, now Lobo's position seems to be: it was entirely legal to fire the judges; and the law the judges found unconstitutional should be reformed to add back the missing constitutional protections, so the judges were right all along.

Perfectly coherent position. Almost like those lawyers who "make you see as truth what is not truth, and the inverse".